Kimberly M'Carver

Kimberly M'Carver's seemingly Guy Clark-influenced Country-Folk songs radiate romantic Southern nighttime air that's good for breathing in with each chord change. Her songs transcend pure prairie soul, with the warmest tones to comfort your ears since your first experience with a Phil Spector-produced hit. M'Carver's ethereal coos and pastoral croons are so hypnotizing that you'll fantasize about her singing with other people. One listen to a love song by M'Carver and you'll find yourself thinking things like, "What would it sound like if she sang close harmony with Emmylou Harris?" or, "Damn, I'd love to hear her sing one with Dolly and Dwight." - Rhapsody

NEW YORK MUSIC DAILY - Purist Country Songwriting, Brilliant Voice, by delarue

Houston songwriter Kimberly M’Carver has a voice that will very gently knock you out. It’s sort of a cross between Emmylou Harris and vintage Dolly Parton, with all the nuance of the former and the sweetness of the latter. M’Carver can sing clear and pure as a country spring, or turn up the vibrato at the end of a phrase for an especially heartbroken edge. True to its title, most of her latest album Hard Waltz, is oldschool, purist country music, with several numbers in 3/4 time. Being a strong songwriter, M’Carver had no problem pulling together an amazing band to back her this time around, including but not limited to co-producer/guitarist Scott Neubert, singer/guitarist Claire Lynch, Little Big Town bassist John Thomasson, GreenCards fiddler Eamon McLoughlin and Elvis Costello accordionist Jeff Taylor. Fans of hard country will love this.

The title track opens the album with a lush bed of acoustic guitars and an accordion solo that hands off to a pennywhistle – it’s very Emmylou. with a little Celtic edge. M’Carver picks up the pace with the catchy newgrass tune Bliss Creek and then brings it down again with the sweet, sad waltz You Say That You’re Leaving. “Promises bend, souls they grow thirsty and love stories end,” she laments before the gorgeous blend of fiddle and pedal steel kicks in on the chorus.

Teardrops and Wine sounds like it’s pretty self-explanatory, but it’s not that simple, and the way M’Carver slides up to a note on the second chorus will give you chills. Rodeo Clown was inspired by M’Carver’s second cousin, who is the genuine item – but the song casts the singer in the role of someone who’s “always there to pick you up when you’re knocked down.” It’s a neat twist. Devil or Fool, with its slow-burning, blues-drenched slide guitar, makes a stark contrast, taking its inspiration from M’Carver’s many trips to Sugar Land prison to visit her brother, who was in for drugs and a probation violation.

It Never Gets Easy, a straight-up, backbeat country song with some memorable lead guitar, steel and fiddle work, ponders a frustrating relationship where “the heat of your touch turned everything else cold.” Redemption, with its resigned blend of country gospel and Tex-Mex, takes a haunting look at dead-end despair and alienation and draws inspiration from the suicide of M’Carver’s first husband. It contrasts with the next track, There’s Always Sorry, a make-up song set to electric highway rock with a sizzling, spiraling guitar lead. The album winds up with the gentle, jazz-tinged countrypolitan waltz Will You Show Me the Stars – dedicated to M’Carver’s astrophysicist husband of the last 25 years – and the vivid, picturesque post-breakup ballad Another Goodbye Waltz, something that Lucinda Williams would be proud to have written. M’Carver has several other purist albums to her credit and has toured with Jim Lauderdale; if she ever makes it up to NYC, you’ll hear about it here. - New York Music Daily

ELMORE MAGAZINE - Competition among up-and-coming female country artists is only slightly less ferocious than a Category 5 hurricane. If you want to play in country music's big leagues, then you need to do so in the biggest league of them all, Texas. This is M'Carver's fourth collection of original material and her first in 12 years, and it can only enhance her climb to recognition. Her music is born of the best of country songwriting: honest, personal tales never clogged with easy sentiment or self-pity.

The album opens with a title track that will convince you of M'Carver's prodigious talent; Celtic-flavored with a haunting accordion and whistle accompaniment, it will linger with you long after the fade-out. "Devil or Fool" was inspired by the visits she paid to her brother in prison. The album's standout, "You Say That You're Leaving," is a genuine tearjerker. We've all been there; we just need someone to tell it and sing it right. The album closes with a goold ole country waltz, "Another Goodbye," leaving the listener grateful for their time with M'Carver.

One can only hope that the fame and regard due to her is finally ushered in by this stellar set of originals. - Elmore Magazine

3RD COAST MUSIC - 4 Stars - Back in 1989, the intent of Music City was to focus on Austin musicians but that didn't even last the first year because country folk singer-songwriter Kimberly M'Carver came in from Houston, knocked me out with both her live show and Breathe The Moonlight (Philo, 1990, incidentally Rounder's last LP) and claimed the cover of #11. M'Carver has cast a similar spell over so many music writers, Texan, national and international, all competing with each other to up the superlatives, that if you were to go by her press kit, you'd assume that she's a star you've somehow overlooked. However, while they think well of her in Houston, M'Carver never broke through like, say Nanci Griffith, with whom she's often, though I think erroneously, compared (in my 1990 story, I quoted another singer-songwriter as saying, M'Carver sings better, writes better, looks better and is a nicer person than Nanci Griffith, and that still sounds about right). This may, as I've seen speculated, be partly due to the fact that, over 23 years, she's only put out four albums, the last 12 years ago, but the upside of this rather sparse discography is that they're all superb, especially Cross The Danger Line (2001) and this one, on both of which she and Scott Neubert took over production, with Neubert also playing sensational mandolin, acoustic, electric and slide guitars, pedal steel and dobro, along with harmony vocals (Claire Lynch does some lovely harmony work too). Most reviews of M'Carver's albums, including mine, start with The Voice, several writers giving her an edge over Emmylou Harris let alone Nanci Griffith, then move on to her intimate lyrics (a few to the red hair and green eyes), this time all original, with a couple of co-writes, a double whammy that, if nothing else, shows how little influence an entire regiment of music writers has on the real world. - 3rd Coast Music - 4 Stars

ROOTS MUSIC REPORT - 4 Stars
With a timbre tailor-made for hymns on Sunday and a quaver decidedly Parton-esque, Houston-based Kimberly M'Carver's vocals are a match made in Country Heaven for her true-to-the-roots lyrics and melodies. Strong tracks on this, her fourth release, include "Teardrops and Wine," "You Say That You're Leaving," and "It Never Gets Easy." First-rate fretwork is abundant, much of it from Ms. M'Carver's co-producer, multi-instrumentalist Scott Neubert. Accordion provides a Celtic touch on the title track and adds to the charm of an unexpected pop ballad, "Will You Show Me The Stars," co-written by sideman Eric Korb. - Roots Music Report

HOUSTON PRESS - ROCKS OFF 100 - M'Carver's fourth album, it's a no-frills, perfectly produced, largely acoustic set that should fit comfortably on your trad-country shelf next to the Dolly Parton, Kendalls and Sweethearts of the Rodeo records. Absent of any pickup trucks, shotguns, or crossover-pop ambitions, HARD WALTZ requires little more than M'Carver's pristine soprano to carry it home ... - Houston Press - Rocks Off 100

KPFT 90.1 - Kimberly has been at it a long time and it tells, HARD WALTZ is her best work to date! - KPFT 90.1 "Wide Open Spaces" Radio Show

ROOTS & BRANCHES, KRFC - ... such a good writer, in the great tradition of artists like Nanci Griffith - Roots and Branches, KRFC 88.9FM, Colorado

HOUSTON CHRONICLE - Anyone who’s ever experienced the country folk of Houston singer-songwriter Kimberly M’Carver knows that she believes in symbolism. For her, train whistles are synonymous with loneliness, and a city like “Santa Fe” drowns with spirituality ... On the cover of her latest album, “Cross The Danger Line,” she has stunning long hair the color of a red fox and green eyes. In person her stare is even more penetrating ... one realizes how thin the line is between stardom and the search for it. A listen to “Cross The Danger Line” makes one wonder why some promoter hasn’t helped her cross it ... Combining a mix of Nanci Griffith country-folk modernism and Loretta Lynn blue-collar strength, M’Carver has forged a collection of songs and performances that most country artists would love to call their own. - Houston Chronicle

ROCKZILLAWORLD - M’Carver is another of Houston’s buried treasures ... If at some date in the future some industrious independent filmmaker decides to do the Emmylou Harris story, don’t be surprised if Kimberly M’Carver stars as Ms. Harris... Only M’Carver’s may be an even purer voice than Harris’, a voice with wider range and uncannily perfect pitch and tone ... M’Carver has a Hall of Fame voice, one of those rare vocal instruments most artists would kill to have ... Not only is M’Carver’s voice in excellent form on her first release in seven years, Cross The Danger Line, her songwriting just keeps reaching new heights. The fact that her “Death and Texas” isn’t being heard across the radio dial in Houston is another sign that the district attorney needs to investigate some of these local programmers who keep claiming they play “The Songs of Texas” or “The Sounds of Texas” or whatever their latest fraudulent false-advertising buzz-phrase is. Or else it proves that the County Health Examiner needs to offer free hearing aids to the obviously impaired radio programmers in town. Come on, people, listen up. We’ve got a winner here right in our midst and her name isn’t Shania or Martina or Faith! - Rockzillaworld

SONGWRITER'S MONTHLY - M’Carver’s voice is as sweet and magical as your first kiss. Her music delicately lingers in the air with a comforting and intimate familiarity. A tender rustic artist with a classic style.
- Songwriter's Monthly, PA

TRAVERSE CITY RECORD-EAGLE - With a clear passionate voice often compared to Emmylou Harris and knack for punchy sellf-mocking lyrics that recalls the best of Loretta Lynn, she still has the soulful looks and acoustic matrix of the classic folk performer... Take the lyrics to Fix’n Paint, a song built around the image of a battered barroom chair, that came to M’Carver in a dream. It’s a bleak tune that speaks about morning-after disillusionment ... it’s as world weary as anything Waylon or Willie ever did, but there’s a literary quality to M’Carver’s work that elevates it above the pork rinds and pickup trucks. - Traverse City Record-Eagle

HOUSTON PRESS - A sitting-on-the-beach-house-porch-in-a-breezy-sunset ambience ... M’Carver’s voice covers the same full-throated range that Emmylou Harris’s does, but has a sweeter, more “dulcet” tone, and here she applies it lovingly ... She shows clearly with Danger Line that she no longer needs label help in putting out first-rate stuff. - Houston Press

COUNTRY STANDARD TIME - Think the clear voice of Dolly Parton and the big-eye flowing-hair mystique of Stevie Nicks, and you have the aura of Houston singer-songwriter M’Carver ... the former Rounder artist releases three covers and seven originals that oscillate nicely between a pristine bluegrass and an edgy Texas sound. - Country Standard Time

ALL MUSIC GUIDE - When it comes to country-folk few can compete with M’Carver ... when one listens to the first three songs, ... he or she knows that M’Carver has hit upon the right approach: ... superb song choices topped by her expressive voice, confident and comfortable ... She avoids the cliches of the genre ... Both Santa Fe and Sweetest Surrender have the feeling of classics. - All Music Guide

3RD COAST MUSIC - The Houstonite’s soprano could have been developed by NASA; light and delicate as gossamer, strong and flexible as titanium, a marvelously nuanced instrument that, for all its gentleness and elegance, effortlessly dominates the proceedings - but she’s also a remarkable songwriter, whose folk-country has a similar dichotomy, combining poignant vulnerability with cool self-assurance… - 3rd Coast Music, TX

CD REVIEW - She breathes an intimacy that suggests Alison Krauss, gives vocal interpretations worthy of vintage Dolly Parton, and provides just a touch of the border romance that has set Tish Hinojosa apart from the crowd. - CD Review

GAVIN REPORT AMERICANA CHART - M'Carver's Inherited Road is so full of that Texas border country-folk flavor that one should qualify for frequent flyer miles to that region after just a few listens ... This Cold Night and Blue Norther serve up that perfect blend of country-meets-bluegrass. - Gavin Report Americana Chart

NEW COUNTRY - If there's one thing Texas songwriters learn, it's how to tell a good story. On her second album, M'Carver proves she's learned that lesson well with a low key set of tunes that could easily be adapted into a trilogy of one-act plays ... M'Carver's lyrics are simultaneously conversational and poetic- an irresistible blend - and her wounded soprano is the perfect instrument for spinning these yarns ... like any good artist, M'Carver aims for the heart, not the charts, and she consistently hits her mark. - New Country, Nashville TN

FT. WORTH STAR TELEGRAM - Superb debut album ... at once lilting and saddening, Breathe the Moonlight is a radiant collection that bears - even demands - repeated listening and rewards the same with hauntingly nuanced performances ... - Ft. Worth Star Telegram

FOLK ROOTS - Here's acoustic folk-country in Texas singer-songwriter style showcasing the sweetest clearest voice since Emmylou first fried you ... - Folk Roots

DIRTY LINEN - Her presentation is so in-touch with the meaning of her songs, I'd wager that listeners who do not understand the English language will be able to feel the mood of each track nevertheless ... Breathe the Moonlight is an impressive first album in all respects. - Dirty Linen